Patchwork
by Kay the Cricketed
Summary: [Post!Series, implied slash and het] Christopher dreams. Sometimes about children, and the river, and the curve of Ganymede's smile. Jalil dreams about loss and opportunities dashed to the dirt. April dreams of spring and blood. And David not at all.
1. Christopher dreams

_Patchwork_

By Kay

Disclaimer: I don't own Everworld, but I choose not to. Okay. That was a lie, too.

Author's Notes: Several interesting implications here-- it's a dreamy mixpot of Everyone x Christopher, weirdly enough, but subtle. Christopher/Etain, some Ganymede/Christopher and David/Christopher and even, for a brief second, Christopher/Jalil implications strewn around like broken lunch boxes.

I hope it's okay. Please enjoy the strange dreams. :D

* * *

_Upon the wake of morning  
I learned the world stopped short of turning  
and caught in the air, falling down _

I slipped, and smiled, and saw you there.

* * *

Christopher dreams.

He can always tell he's dreaming because everything feels like it's real, like he's awake and moving in regular motion, regular time, and he can feel the pump of his blood and the sour backwash of his breath. But reality isn't like that, so very real, it's more of a delayed twist to the gut that hits him twice before he can begin to recover—he doesn't taste what he inhales, he doesn't hear the exposition of his life bubbling in his chest. It's more filmy sights, and mistakes, and listening for the things he won't hear.

When he dreams, Christopher gets everything right. A well-rehearsed play perfectly executed on stage, none of it meaning anything, each word on target. The guy gets the girl, the evil is bade to sleep, tights don't chafe and swords don't stain. He figures out the moral lesson and straightens himself out—the blue of her eyes makes him fumble, the twilight dip to her smile brings him to despair, but that's what saves him, too, in the end. And friends don't fall when they should. They covet and witness and blame, but they still take his laughter for what it is, swept straight to the sun with it. That, too, saves him in the end.

Life isn't like a dream. It's ten fucking times worse, always.

It goes like this.

* * *

Christopher dreams.

Etain is a blot of blue Indian ink against the flow of the river, just another wave breaking on the shore. She flounders, lost. He's there to reach for her, standing on the bank. He is a hero. Etain is his princess, his mystery, his dream that he's dreaming about in shades of navy and black and baited waiting.

He picks up her and feels the weight, the water sluicing off her dress in light-sparkled streams that only make her more beautiful. She smiles. She's been there all along, just for him, the treasure at the end of the rainbow and not even a dragon to hold him back from it. "I could walk to forever if I were by your side," she murmurs, pressing against him and right in all the soft places. She's not a prize; she's the battle's victory.

"Forever," Christopher says, and he can't even imagine it. For the first time he can smell the sweetness on her, that edge of wild grass and summers, and her color has never seemed more vivid. Her hands are heavy in his own, the wrinkles of her fingers from soaking too long like baby flesh on his own white wrists. They are both porcelain like the gods, ever clear, ever beautiful in this moment.

He knows he's dreaming. It's not real, it's just another thing to forget in the morning. He knows all that, and still Christopher can't bring himself to close his eyes when he leans forward to kiss her.

* * *

Christopher dreams.

April is swollen with child, a pretty flash of red and cream against the walls of the castle. Sometimes he sees her smile at him—more often than not, she reaches to touch his arm, mouth opening as if to speak. He doesn't know the father. And bizarrely, here, Christopher doesn't realize he's dreaming yet because it seems so utterly _right_ to see her like that, so beautifully curved and serene, that it floats past his thoughts. It isn't until she finally catches him, her fingernails digging into his skin until he feels the pain, that he knows.

She leaves him little things on the window ledges. Twigs tied up in lavender ribbons, a rubber ball dyed with ink. The first season of Mary Tyler Moore, still glossy in its plastic packaging. Christopher hoards these gifts like his own life, sewn up neatly in the bottom of his lungs, so that he can always say her name without shaking: _'April, April, April.'_

He wonders if it will be a boy with red curls, the kind that will grow warm under your hand from baking under a spring sun. Christopher trusts April; he doesn't mean to, but he does. If she is willing to bring something frail into the world, he believes in her, and that frightens him terribly. The future is a changing, shifting, always different and terrifying thing.

"You mourn when you should rejoice," April says, brushing his cheek with a dry thumb. "Pick up the things you've dropped or the sight of blood will shake you."

Christopher wants to say he's never let go of anything, though. It isn't until he's turned the words over and glanced at the bottom that he finds it's just another lie.

* * *

Christopher dreams.

The curve of the golden cup looks sharp enough to break skin—he doesn't want to touch it, even as much as he'd love to drink from it. The wine is red, claret, just a shade away from blood and that makes his lips tingle for its tartness. Across from the table, cloaking the setting sun's light like a cape, Ganymede is smiling tenderly.

"You should drink," the immortal murmurs, but his mouth doesn't move. There is a brightness to him that hurts Christopher's eyes.

Christopher doesn't want to appear a coward, or greedy, so he only shakes his head. He won't slice himself trying to grip it. He won't reach, won't do anything but stare out of the corner of his eye, always wanting, always needing.

"It's a beautiful piece of life," Ganymede states softly, and picks up the chalice before Christopher can say anything to bring him away. Thick rivulets of maroon flake off of his knuckles like snow onto the yellow tablecloth. "It will grant immortality to whomever imbibes it. Would you care for a sip, my lord?"

Shame has clogged up his esophagus; there will be no wine for Christopher today. When he knocks it out of Ganymede's embrace, the wine spills on the table, but he doesn't care—Christopher is already stretched out with his fists in Ganymede's sunlight, pulling them together, because his heart burns and there is no quenching something with another fire, just more pain, just Ganymede still smiling like that on his forehead, blessing, blessing, damned, a kiss.

"Ah, that was it," Ganymede whispers, and Christopher feels the forgiveness ruffle his hair. He wonders if he's always been crying like this.

* * *

Christopher dreams.

The years have passed like blankets heaped on top of each other in storage—spread thin, they seem so very small. Etain sleeps with their children and the castle is quiet in dusk. He sees the glow of the lantern outside the window before he hears the coughing; it's what drives him down the stairs and through the entrance hall decked with the heads of gods, their faces still warped in indignation. He pinned Hel's furious snarl against the kitchen's quarters himself, but believes they've covered it since.

When he opens the door, Christopher knows what he will see, but his dinner drops into the bottom of his belly like a deadweight. Slumped against the door, flickering in and out of the little light he's kept going with matches and sparks of magic, Jalil is more ghost than friend.

"You say you'll keep it open, but you never do." Dark eyes, speculating, and they haven't changed at all. Christopher feels so old next to Jalil, always does now. Jalil is still made of adolescence, the sharp curves of his shoulders and ankles, the jagged jut of his collarbone, the sly curl of his grin. "And so I wait in the cold, King Christopher. You owe me your chamber."

"Etain's sleeping with the brats tonight," Christopher says, bending to the ground. He wonders how to pick up a shadow blotch against a door. "You can have another, though."

"It always is," Jalil says, sighing. He sinks lower into the ground, and for a moment Christopher is terrified that he will finally disappear into the earth.

"Patchwork," Christopher pleads, and tries to lift his shoulders above the dirt. Jalil laughs at him, batting his aid away gracefully.

"I knew I'd be waiting if I came to your door. I do it anyway, though, you know," and Jalil hooks his voice into Christopher's soul, as always, but the years take the bitter frustration away from the bite, "because you make it easy."

* * *

Christopher dreams.

"I've kept a thousand recipes for love," Merlin is telling him, matter-of-fact and confident. Beneath them, the world is just another ripple in the blackness. Christopher wants to pay attention, but he can't stop staring at it. If he looks away, it may vanish. "They're all as flawed as the next, of course, but it's not like real life is any better. The whole goddamn world is as helpless as an infant when it comes to finding a soulmate—or rather, infants are the best at it. Everworld and Old World, it's all the same."

He can feel the cold of space numbing his kneecaps, the fleshy weight to his thighs, the tip of his nose. Freezing over. Christopher remembers the winter wind of Montana, and it felt like this so very long ago.

"I've ruined everything for myself," he recalls, reaching to touch the little rings expanding under his toes. The earth isn't brown and green and blue like he'd always thought, but a pleasant and pink-edged color that isn't anything one way or the other. It's living, Christopher thinks, and feels warm.

"You should remember this," Merlin confides, "when you wake up. I never share my secrets with anyone but the worthy, you know." And then he proceeds to tell Christopher something that fixes him inside, could fix everything, and that he forgets the second he opens his eyes.

* * *

Christopher is awake. David is crying.

Not loud, sobbing like crying—if Christopher hadn't seen his face, hadn't glimpsed the shine of tears watering down the dirt scruffed across David's cheeks, he wouldn't have known. It is a silent, unforgiving mourning. The dullness in those brown eyes is like meeting an old friend, and Christopher watches another droplet run down from the corner of his eyes, over the swollen red rim, and finally tremble on his jawline and refusing to fall.

This is awkward. So fucking awkward. Christopher looks around for April, for Jalil—hell, for Loki, anyone but him—but the hallway is empty and Galahad's sword is laying uselessly on the ground. David's done fighting for the day, for the _year_, really, and he's never been good at turning sharp objects on himself.

Fuck. Christopher is still reeling from a lack of sleep, still half-drunk and half-pissed off, something flushed in his chest and face. He can't deal with David. He can't even deal with himself. Fuck.

"I can't sleep anymore," David tells him, dead. They're celebrating the victory outside in the courtyard, but David is defeated. Crumbled. "All I see is their faces. I hate you for not coming with me."

The last thing Christopher needs is something else to atone for, and he feels angry right then. Angry because David is dropping something else on his shoulders, angry that he's still juggling the rest, angry that he's angry. "I hate you, too," he spits out, bitter, swaying on his feet. "I hate this whole stupid place. Wanna kill me?"

Another tear runs down David's cheekbone. Blends into the rest, just a wet sheen on browned skin. "I'm… really tired."

So is Christopher. "So am I."

At that, David lifts his head like it weighs more than a wet dress or the guilt of a sin—he shudders a bit, falters, and then lets out a wounded noise. Christopher is still waiting for April or someone to come. No one is.

"Fuck," he swears. And then, "What the hell else do you want from me? I can't do anything for myself, much less your sorry ass. What am I supposed to do?"

And David looks at him like he was the last answer, the last hope, all strangled and cut off and gone on the last boat, and now they're both alone, and David is rejected, resigned, overwhelmed, and is crushed under them both, and it's all over right now, it's the end before the day and Christopher wants to scream at everything when he gets on a knee and takes the still-bleeding arm (but none of his organs falling out, so it will be fine, the wound can just bleed its heart out if it wants), loops it around his neck, and David _sobs_ then, just like Christopher's learned to, loud and desperate and starving, animal keens building in volume.

Life is ten fucking times worse, always.

"Shut the hell up," Christopher mutters, and brings them both to their feet. David is heavy, but he doesn't feel the weight. He's not dreaming anymore. This is real—it's much harder to find David's room than it would be had he been sleeping.

* * *

Christopher dreams.

The sea is before him, calm and tipped gold. It's like Ganymede poured out all of his laughter over the waves. Christopher can catch the scent of salt on the wind, can feel the dwelling cushion of thousands of feet deep into the ground from the ocean—it's like sleeping, he thinks drowsily, and lets his cheek fall to the sand.

Next to him, David is watching the sky.

He's dreaming. So it can't hurt to ask. "Do you ever think we'll be right? I mean, that we'll be okay? Everything will be okay?"

It takes a while before David answers, and when he does it's slow, travels across lands and the sea to whatever's out there without any effort. "I had a dream once," he says, "and I had the answer. I kept it close."

Christopher's heart jumps. "What was it? You can sell it for pennies or wishes. You could sell it to me." Except he wouldn't take it because, honestly, David needs it more and Christopher is only greedy when it doesn't matter most.

David smiles; it's something Christopher's never seen before. "If I offered to break it in half with you, to share, would you have what it takes to buy it?"

"Ah, that was it," Christopher whispers, and can't look away from it. He wonders if he's always been so utterly warm like this.

* * *

Christopher is awake. David is sleeping.

He turns from the figure curled up in the sheets, blearily searching for the sun outside the open shutters of David's room. It is falling low in the sky. He doesn't remember the part from when David closed his eyes and Christopher followed, but their leader is shivering in his sleep and it is very simple, in truth, to pull the blanket higher over him.

He'd almost forgotten how nice it feels to wake up.

"Patchwork," Christopher says aloud, considering. He wonders what will happen next. There is only one way to find out, so it's easy enough—he sits on David's bed and watches him sleep, waiting, listening for the things he might hear.

_The End_


	2. Jalil dreams

_Patchwork II_

By Kay

Disclaimer: I OWN THE DEAD BABY.

Author's Notes: Sequel to "Patchwork" (see the obvious title for details), an earlier piece I did with Christopher having psycho dreams. It's proving to be a series. Jalil's turn now, apparently. Implications of Christopher/David, Christopher/Jalil, David/Jalil, Senna/Jalil, and Christopher/Etain. Whew. That's it for this one. Damn.

Thank you, as always, so incredibly much for reading. I really can't express how grateful I am. (bows)

* * *

_Three times you clipped my wings  
in the last, bare traces of winter  
and laughed about the decomposition of my hope _

Because my love is already cold, it won't be frozen.

* * *

Jalil dreams.

He doesn't ever realize he's dreaming until it's over—that same innate mechanism that controls his brain while he's awake, the voice that insists on angles and equations and logical contours to illogical shapes, grows quiet after dark. It plagues him during the day and then abandons him without mercy to his nightmares. He could almost be bitter about that if he hadn't grown so grateful for the silence. Even Jalil gets tired of Jalil sometimes, after all.

But it means without it things won't make sense and worst of all, he won't be able to recognize that. It's the acceptance that gets him; the trickery of it all. When he wakes in the blackness with his heart racing, chemicals in his body, the adrenaline, still tightening his veins and he's _ready_ to go, to flee, from whatever irrational terror that had been following him…

Jalil is used to not being in control of his own brain. That doesn't mean he has to like it.

Most of his dreams aren't pleasant. If he thinks about it, he might be able to infer that it's because Jalil can't leave well enough alone, even subconsciously. He's always rebelling, struggling, asking piercing questions, opening forbidden doors, discontent to simply _be_. Even his dreams warp out of his doubts and irritation with the unreality of their structure. As he's caught up in them, living them, _feeling_ them like they're real, there must be some part of himself that sees the glistening wound of truth behind the bandage and can't help but pick at it. A glimmer of recognition, something to make him stir the waters in the futile quest to touch it. It's as red as a blister, the truth.

It goes like this.

* * *

Jalil dreams.

The library of DaggerMouth is cold with dusk, the last vestige of light quivering over the table tops. There is never enough time; the sun has a vendetta against Jalil, who believes in perspective and winter and electrical wiring. He has to squint to see his hands splayed out across his lap and laid wide open for the world to see.

They are cut wide by Baldur's arrows, the skin curling at the edge of his palm. Flayed. Peeled. Wound around the thin, scratched bones of his digits and the heel is the remnants of still-turning clockwork. Gears painted red for the blood that's not there. If he washes them, the gears will rust. If he doesn't, the germs will eat him alive. Jalil lives in perpetual stasis—one evil traded back for another, so he just stays very still between them, inviting nothing. He barely lives.

Jalil can read the map to home in his veins, but it's a path he's too afraid to walk. The quiet screeches in his ears.

Seven times. But not anymore, he reminds himself, only to be caught up in it once more, helpless. Seven times. Seven times seven is seventeen. What comes after seven? Is there anything at all? There is a boy, sitting on the window sill, a flash of burnt amber—

He can't play the harmonica with these hands, Jalil thinks. He can't do anything at all.

* * *

Jalil dreams.

"We could have been together," Senna says. She's waist deep in the lake, the white cotton of her skirt billowing up around her thighs. It's not pretty, though; she looks too young, too shrewd to be pretty. Always has. Jalil knows because he is the same species.

He's thinking about the night at the dam, the dwarves and their Lady. Except this Senna has no gold to offer, no illusions—she's stripped down to her own clockwork, a rusting silver spire falling apart. On the bank, picking up acorns and storing them in a baby's cradle, Jalil has no time, no time at all to play games with the drowning falsifier. Every minute is another minute and what comes past seven is looming. "You wouldn't have had me," Jalil tells her. He drops another handful of immortality into the burden.

"We could have understood it all. You knew the game; could play it. Together, like this… we could have had anything. Everything," Senna says, but she's not persuading. She mourns.

"I wouldn't have had _you_," he answers.

"With me, that always seems to be the way."

When he's finished, Jalil dumps the cradle of acorns into the sea. They bob and then sink, a thousand pathways Senna never followed or became, and if it's regret Jalil tastes then he'll live without a tongue.

* * *

Jalil dreams.

David is in Egypt, where the sun bakes the streets and the river swells over the shore like a spilled drink. Jalil knows David is in Egypt because the moon has disappeared, too afraid to face the General who took on Everworld and perhaps even won, and the people are dying for it. David, too, yearns for the comfort of a cool night. But he can never catch it.

"Prices you pay," Jalil tells him, watching the cats crawl over the cobblestones. They're more shadow than fur. More human than beast. Jalil feels an empathy of sorts with them. "You've bought out the last stock. Three thousand and falling. Forecasts call for another perfect knight."

"To battle, then," David says. Jalil looks up at him, squinting through the sun, and suddenly he recognizes the boy who once stepped into a fight with some white guys in a Chicago parking lot that were hassling a black student, the boy who got them to back off, who nodded to Jalil in the hallways and always seemed as though he were ill at ease in his own world.

For a moment, Jalil can't speak past the longing.

The cats slink around David's ankles and pull him to the Underworld. "Prices you pay," David says, smiling humorlessly as he sinks below the stones.

* * *

Jalil dreams.

"Penny for your thoughts," April says, her arms full of swaddled cloth and squirming pink arms. Jalil is perched several feet high above her, leaning over a pedestal and dropping apples onto the ground.

"Hmmm?" he asks. "Oh. Pennies. I don't have much use for them."

"Are you in the dark?"

"Always," Jalil sighs, "except when I'm not."

April laughs and her child is swallowed whole, disappearing into the morning as it dissolves over the horizon. In the backwash of gold, Jalil shields his eyes. When he can see again, he is alone and the apples are gone.

In their place, scattered across the ground are droplets of blood swelling up from the grass.

* * *

Jalil dreams.

He awaits Christopher outside of his castle, the cold seeping into his bones. He's lost parts of himself, Jalil has, thrown them away—to Hel, to the trenches, to little children who were hungry, to knowledge, to Death, to Thor's mighty fist, to everyone who asked a question and couldn't find an answer. The night is starless. Jalil sighs and tumbles against the door, sliding down the wood until he hits bottom.

Christopher is late. He is always late. They say late is better than never, but Christopher might never, as well. Jalil gives him the benefit of the doubt wrapped up in all the hopes he hasn't learned to descramble. Jalil gives him too much. There is a hole tracing the way to eternity and it's hollow as the bleak sea, where the last of the Romans rest their boats and measure the tides. They once asked Jalil to join them, but the road signs had pointed north, and so Jalil comes to Christopher.

"You say you'll keep it open, but you never do," Jalil says. "And so I wait in the cold, King Christopher. You owe me your chambers."

"Etain's sleeping with the brats tonight," Christopher says, crouching beside him. His cloak is more human than animal; the fur is dusted like age. Jalil's fingers itch to touch it. "You can have another, though."

"It always is." But Jalil smiles. If you want something long enough, you stop caring if you get it.

David is calling him. Jalil knows it's just another illusion, another piece of magic, but he can't help but close his eyes and slink down to the dirt. Christopher's hands brush his shoulders, pleadingly. "Patchwork," the king begs, and if Jalil were a terrible man he would accept it, but Jalil knows about prices and pains and the solitary flagstone two inches off the mark. He knows everything.

That is his curse and his blessing.

"I knew I'd be waiting if I came to your door," is what he says, wistful, and lets go because it's not fair to Christopher, but mostly because it's not fair to Jalil. "I do it anyway, though, because you make it easy."

The dirt is like cotton to his aching shoulders. He should close his eyes, but he doesn't, just wonders what happened to the stars.

* * *

Jalil dreams.

"You're a sharp one," Merlin observes, offering him a cup of something steaming. Jalil, staring at the abandoned subway car they're seated in, takes it automatically. He doesn't burn his fingers. The leather under his thighs is cracked.

"This… this is a dream," Jalil says.

"As I said: very sharp," Merlin laughs. "I have a gift for you but I fear you'd never take it, boy."

Jalil bristles at being called boy so flippantly, but then a glow comes over the train, leaking into the windows—something bold and bright and _blue_, like winter, like ice, like the ocean and time and chinaware. "The world," he says, distracted, "it's so…"

"Yes."

"I can't take it," Jalil breathes, eyes still fastened outside as they come to their destination, "because I have no use for it. They won't share; neither will I. Give it to someone who needs it."

Merlin's hand is a brand upon the earth, his shoulder. "So sharp you bleed yourself dry," he says, not unkindly or without pity, and then it's there and not and Jalil drops it over the tracks to be dashed against someone else's feet.

* * *

Jalil is awake.

He knows he's awake. Of course. Up is up and down is down. His feet hurt when they hit the chilly floor of DaggerMouth. His mouth aches because he bit his lip hard enough to bleed last night, some expression of wanting he doesn't recall. The voice doesn't exist in Everworld anymore (maybe it was all a dream, anyway, just a passing thought, a little glimpse), but Jalil still has echoes in his head that rebound and reflect, over and over, until it bruises. He's still learning to ignore it. The memory of the routine itself is its own voice.

Christopher drags David to breakfast and makes him eat. They're oddly at peace with each other; with themselves. The war has made David brittle and waiting has made Christopher thick. They're both a little like strangers and Jalil's surprised at how much that stings.

"Welcome back," he says to David wearily, dropping into a nearby chair. "You don't look dead so I suppose things went okay."

David is tired, but not broken. Or perhaps… different somehow. "No," he answers, simple. "But I guess I'm not dead."

"Ass kicked, but not dead." Christopher. Of course. He hasn't popped a joke in weeks (and Jalil will never own up to missing it), so it only adds to the strangeness. The way they move—tentative, like new. Jalil studies them inconspicuously, buttering his bread with the careful precision of a snake watching a particularly fat mouse. David is wearing Christopher's shirt, the sleeves dipping over his knuckles, scar-ridged and sore. They don't want to look each other in the eye, but every so often Christopher bumps into David's shoulder on purpose.

_'Ah,'_ Jalil thinks. He feels oddly empty.

Well, it doesn't matter.

"I'll talk to you later about it," is what he says, getting up abruptly to leave. His breakfast is untouched. His stomach doesn't feel so good. "Come see me in the library when you're… ready or whatever."

"See you in another millennia," Christopher says.

Jalil leaves. Goes back to his room. He slumps back on the bed, arms crossed over his eyes, and stays there for a long time.

* * *

Jalil dreams.

"It was a mighty fine throw," Thorolf says warmly, clapping his shoulder. Then the Viking is gone and Jalil is alone, perched on a gigantic tin bowl with holes punched through to give off light. He's sitting on the sky, he realizes. It's very cold. It's very quiet.

"Prices you pay," Jalil murmurs, contemplating.

And then—because Jalil never cries, even when it might be a dream and no one is there to see it—he sits back and plans, sets out a new course. Got to figure out what to do tomorrow. Got to pick up the pieces again. Got to figure out what comes past seven, if anything, until the morning comes, red as a blister, to remind him.

_The End_


End file.
